One time a couple winters ago, I stood at a monster truck rally with my brothers, decked out in camo pants, Caterpillar boots, a Chevy sweatshirt, and a grimy John Deere hat I’d used to polish a charcoal grille, and belted out Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” at the top of my lungs while scenes of monster trucks flying through the air and barrel-rolling through stadiums played on the jumbotron. Also, we were drunk. At the time, I believed I had just done the most American thing possible. I had just lived America. The beautiful. The spacious skies. The amber waves of Budweiser.
But, compared to what the managers at suburban St. Louis’s Lynch Hummer have come up with, my Monster Jam pilgrimage seems traitorous . . . downright Canadian, even. I may as well have taken a soy-latte-fueled dump on the Constitution. They’ve combined two of the most essential elements of American life into one huge jingoistic orgy. It’s a more natural fit than Cars and Drivers, really. It’s guns and Hummers.
That’s right. With Hummer sales falling off a cliff that all the approach angle in the industry can’t overcome, the dealership has branched out into the sale of firearms. Because what else do you do when you can’t climb a cliff, except shoot at it? Inspired by the brilliance of the move, we actually considered changing our name to Guns and Hummers, but Lynch Hummer already occupies the domain www.gunsandhummers.com. And, we realized, Hummer doesn’t make an M3 for us to fawn over. There’s an H3, but it . . . well, it stinks. But, like the M3, it is available with a V-8. So there’s that.
But we digress. No BMW that we’ve ever heard of has shared a showroom with guns, nor are we ready for the concept of Germans and heavy artillery yet. Dealership owner Jim Lynch says that firearms manufacturers have shown great support for the idea, as rare weapons and ammunition crowd the shelves of a showroom once filled with Hummers that, incidentally, are also becoming rare.
Unanswered questions abound. Will there be a shooting element added to Lynch’s 60-acre off-road course? Will there be any BOGO deals? Will Lynch’s service department help me to mount my firearms to my Hummer? Will they help me mount my Hummer to my firearms? Will they help me fire my arms out of my Hummer, or should I keep my hands and arms safely inside the vehicle at all times? What happens now if Lynch fails to maintain its leading customer-satisfaction rating? The real question, though, is: when China, the likely future home of Hummer, invades the U.S., on which side of the battle will the patrons of Lynch Hummer stand?
Related posts:
- Hummer H3 Concepts – Auto Shows
- Hummer Only Brand For Sale – Car News
- 2009 Hummer H3T – First Drive Review
General Motors and Chinese company Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co., Ltd have put their deal in writing. Per the agreement, Tengzhong will receive Hummer’s brand and trademarks, intellectual property related to vehicle designs, and Hummer’s dealership network. Tengzhong will purchase Hummer through an investment entity of which it will hold an 80-percent stake, with a private entrepreneur holding the remaining 20 percent. Other financial details have not been released.
